Having lag spikes in any game I play no matter what the settings are.

ColeLeveling

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Jan 1, 2016
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Hello, thank you for giving your valuable time to help me with my issue. My issue is that no matter what game I play and what settings I have them on my fps always seems to spike. I have checked all of my temperatures to make sure that I am not thermal throttling. My temperatures are pretty cool for running games at 1080p.

My specifications are:
CPU: AMD FX 8320 @3.5Ghz
GPU Asus GTX 660 Direct CU II OC
RAM: 8GB Corsiar @800mhz (idk if the low mhz is what is causing the issue)
MOBO: Asrock 960GM/U3S3 FX
Monitor: Samsung 1080p
Monitor: Samsung 720p

I can give an example of what I am talking about.
When I am playing Euro Truck Simulator 2 at ultra settings I will be getting close to 90 frames. But every now and then it will drop to about 20-30. Also if I change the settings to High I will get 120 frames and will drop to about 40. If I am running medium I have about 140 frames and it will drop to around 50. It happens no matter what settings I put any game on.

What I have tried.
Some people tell me to unplug my second monitor but it still will not help my issue. People tell me to dust out my computer will a can of compressed air but that does not help one bit. I have tried looking in the BIOS and watching tutorials to see what others did, I just didn't bother because I didn't know what half of the things were.

How long this has been happening.
This has been happening for about 2 years now, so ever since I built my computer this has been happening.

What are my temperatures while gaming.
CPU: 60C
GPU: 55-60C
Those are the only things that actually get hot during gaming. everything else stays around the same.

If you have any suggestions I will be more than happy to reply so that we can try and figure something out. Thank you!

 

I have monitored my cpu usage but I have not monitored my gpu usage.
My cpu usage varies between games (of course) but during cpu heavy games it wont reach above 50% I also noticed that when I had these spikes my cpu usage went down? Isn't it supposed to go up if it spikes?
My CPU usage idles around 5% at idle
I do not know how to monitor my GPU but I will try and find something to look at it
I have AVG but I don't use it very often cause I don't download a lot of things.
 
You have your PC settings set to 'high performance' instead of 'power-saver'? Use Open Hardware Monitor:

http://openhardwaremonitor.org/

Usually CPU usage spikes down if the usage/temps are too high, but that's not the case here.
 


My pc is on high performance and I am running Arma 3 while doing this test for my gpu
GPU Core got up to 99.0%
GPU memory controller got up to 37%
GPU video engine 0%
GPU Memory got up to 69.8%
 


From what Open Hardware Monitor is telling me, it shows that my cpu temperature is at 39.6 while playing arma 3
 
Those are some low temps, especially while playing Arma III (a game that uses more CPU). Try playing games with only 1 monitor, it can cause stuttering/spikes. Also, check your disk usage (can do this using Task Manager, dunno if OHM shows this)
 

So I unplugged my second monitor and the game did run a lot more smooth but yet there are still spikes while playing
My disc usage is hitting 95-100%
 

It showed that Nvidia backend was at the top for disc usage. Incase you wanted to know
 

I think that Nvidia backend thing stopped because it isn't hitting that much disc usage anymore
 

And if a clean install doesn't work? am I basically out of luck until I build a new pc?
 
I would say that would be the case, I'm going to tell you that I have no idea what the cause could be. To me, it just sounds like something's not doing its job correctly, meaning a defect somewhere. If you can, just swap out parts until you can label the problem. It's a tedious process, but it can help narrow down.
 

damn, well I kinda knew there was a problem with the system because when I booted the pc up and started playing games I would have to restart my pc cause the game would have a spike then it would stay at that fps and not go up. But anyways man thanks for your time and your suggestions. Although you couldn't find a fix to the problem i can maybe use what you told me in the future.
 

Could it be possible that these spikes were because of my ram running at 800mhz? or because my "System Compressed Memory" is using a lot of my memory all the time?
 
Is your RAM at a higher latency than 800Mhz? If so, go to your BIOS and enable XMP. It shouldn't hinder performance like that, but it's worth a shot. Could be the RAM's simply just not keeping up with everything else.
 

I don't exactly know what latency the sticks are but I am going to do what you said and give it a shot.
 

Hey can you maybe tell me where that is in the BIOS and I am sorry about that down vote on your last post. I didn't mean to do that. I was on my phone trying to reply and I couldn't find it and I accidentally press it.
 

It doesn't seem to be there, but either way you said that it probably won't make much of a difference. I appreciate you help and your time. If you ever come across someone that somehow fixed a problem like this, could you maybe point them my way?